Part Twenty-Nine
The three of them were silent as they drove back to the prison, Karen behind the wheel and Nikki and Barbara in the back of the car. Karen was only vaguely aware of keeping her eyes on the road, seeming to work on autopilot while her thoughts became steadily more cluttered. She could feel the panic rising in her, the perpetual increase in the nervous tension that was flowing throughout her body. She shouldn't have gone there, no way in hell should she have gone anywhere near that funeral. Ever since the day she'd gone to the seaside to scatter Ross's ashes, she had thrust her memories of those few days immediately following Ross's death out of her mind. It had been impossible for her to escape the loss itself, but she had just about managed to stop herself from persistently dwelling on watching his body going through those terrifyingly ominous curtains. But today, seeing Henry's coffin, had brought everything surging back like a canal whose loch had been allowed to fill up. Seeming to sense her silent distress, Nikki reached over and gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze, receiving a slight smile in the driving mirror in return. When they pulled up in the prison car park, Nikki and Barbara got out, but Karen stayed where she was. "Are you all right?" Nikki asked, stopping by the driver's window. "I'm fine," Karen said unconvincingly. "You look after Barbara. If you need me for any reason at all, I'll be at home."
Before Nikki could utter another word, Karen turned the car round and drove away. She needed to get away from there, needed to get away from everyone who knew her. She was falling apart fast, and she knew that it wasn't going to be nice. She was almost frantic as she sped through the traffic, barely noticing as she jumped the occasional lights, feeling her chest constrict as though all the air was being slowly dragged out of her. The feeling of suffocation only grew as she approached her flat, the torrent of emotions that she'd buried since Ross's funeral, representing a far greater threat than Fenner ever had done. She pulled up haphazardly in her driveway, the car being left slightly askew, and fumbled for her keys, trying three before she found the right one for the lock. It was almost as though she couldn't breathe, couldn't quite get in enough oxygen, or at least that's how it felt. It terrified her, this feeling of sheer, blind panic, and as she ran up the stairs to her sitting-room, part of her mind was screaming out to be released, and the rest of her was trying to remain calm. She was sensible, usually, so she knew precisely what was happening to her. She was experiencing an emotional reaction to being forcefully reminded of what it had been like to see her son in a coffin, and now she was hyperventilating. But where on earth was the proverbial paper bag when you wanted one? Without a second thought, Karen moved to her sideboard, and poured herself a very large scotch, taking a grateful swig, hoping that the fiery liquid would shock her senses back into some semblance of order. But her hands were shaking so much that the glass slipped from her hand, splintering and the scotch pooling on the wooden floor. This was just too much for her to stand, what some might call the last straw. She could feel the anger at what Ross had done to her rising up inside her, almost entirely consuming her in its bewitching flames. Why had he done this to her, why? Why hadn't she been good enough for him? She had tried to be the best mother a child could have in the circumstances, but she wasn't perfect, nobody was. Yet, that seemed to have been what he had wanted. Picking up a jagged piece of glass from the floor, she couldn't escape the memory of seeing his body there in the morgue at the clinic, with his arm sliced from edge to edge in that stark, sinister fashion. Is this what he'd wanted, she thought to herself, undoing her cuff and rolling back her sleeve? Did he want her to feel so hurt, and angry, and most of all guilty, whenever she thought about him? As the razor-sharp edge of the broken whisky glass pierced her skin, she felt the tears begin to finally flow down her cheeks. Moving as if in her sleep into the kitchen, she held her arm over the sink as it began to bleed, having just enough presence of mind not to allow her outpouring to create any more mess than was absolutely necessary. She felt an odd sort of relief as her blood, her life essence dripped into the sink, the scarlet droplets representing the strength of pain that had been surging through her only moments before. It hadn't been a conscious decision to start cutting, she had purely done it by instinct. The suffocating feeling was going now, slowly ebbing away just as her blood was doing, leaking away bit by bit, until she finally began to feel calmer. Her tears had thinned her blood as they met her skin, almost making it seem as though it was rich, red Burgundy that was running from the gash in her arm, not the iron-filled coagulating force that was keeping her alive. Yet it hadn't kept Ross alive, had it? His blood hadn't kept him alive, it had killed him by its loss, by running away just as hers was doing right now.
As this thought jolted her back into her full awareness, she stared down at her arm, as though only just realising what she had done. Then, hastily grabbing a tea towel, she pressed it to the small wound, and put pressure on it in the way she'd been taught whilst learning to nurse. Christ, what on earth did she think she was doing? She wasn't a cutter, she wasn't the same as Buki or Denny, or any of the other cutters she knew, at least she didn't want to think she was. She was just herself, Karen Betts, the mother who hadn't been quite good enough for Ross. Walking through the lounge, avoiding the whisky and broken glass, she went into the bathroom, rummaging in the cabinet above the sink, and emerging with a sterile dressing. Thankful that the wound wasn't deep, she covered it up, staring at her pale, shattered, utterly terrified face in the mirror.
After taking Barbara back to her cell, Nikki felt at something of a loose end. Barbara had thanked her, but had politely asked to be left alone, saying that she simply needed some time to reflect. Telling Barbara to give her a shout if she needed anything, Nikki left her to it, quietly shutting the cell door behind her. Popping her head round the door of the Julies' cell, she found Julie Saunders writing an essay for her open university course, and Julie Johnston mending the hem on one of her skirts. "You got a minute, Julies?" Nikki asked, pushing the door open a little further. "'Course we have," Julie Saunders replied, looking up from her work. "Come and have a sit down," Julie Johnston invited, moving her sewing paraphernalia to one side to make some room on the bed. After Nikki had handed round her cigarette packet, they all lit up, filling the confined space with smoke. "How did it go?" Julie Saunders asked, seeing how tired Nikki looked. "The same way any funeral goes, I expect," Nikki said ruefully, blowing smoke up at the ceiling, and thinking that but for the smart suit she was wearing, this felt like old times. "It ain't right Henry dying like that," Julie Johnston broke out suddenly. "Leaving poor Babs stuck in this shit hole again." "He couldn't help dying, Ju," Julie Saunders tried to calm her down. "I didn't mean that," Julie J said, looking apologetic. "I just meant that Babs shouldn't be here, going through all this again. She didn't kill anyone, she loved Henry." "That's the law for you, Julie," Nikki told her philosophically. "You know what a pile of bollocks it can be, just as well as I do." "Well, at least she's got a good brief," Julie S said with a slight smile. "What, you mean that one who came to see her, the day after she arrived?" Julie J queried. "I'll have to see it to believe it." "Why so cynical?" Nikki asked, certainly never having questioned her own faith in Jo's ability. "Well, she didn't exactly get Lauren off, now did she," Julie J replied glumly. "It's hardly the same," Nikki told her quietly, trying to keep her voice down because of Barbara in the next-door cell. "Lauren killed Fenner, and no matter how much I might think he got everything he deserved, she did kill him, after weeks of stalking his every move. If Jo had managed to get Lauren found not guilty, it would have been a bloody miracle. Barbara didn't kill Henry, plain and simple. Besides, Jo's got some help this time." "Oh, yeah," Julie S said in thoughtful realisation. "She's got that George Channing, hasn't she? We've only met her twice, but I reckon she'll fight this case with everything she's got. She's the kind of brief who won't go down without a bloody good fight." "We could have done with her when we were in court," Julie J said meditatively. "Just try and keep Barbara occupied in the next few days," Nikki said as she got up to go. "Because now that he's gone, I mean really gone, it's going to be harder than ever for her."
Later on when Nikki returned home, Helen was waiting for her. "How's Barbara?" She asked, giving Nikki a very welcome hug. "Insisting on being left alone," Nikki said tiredly. "Not that I blame her." "What about Karen? Today can't have been very easy for her." "She roared off home, as soon as she'd dropped us off," Nikki told her, as Helen poured them both a much-needed glass of wine. "She didn't look that good though." "It felt kind of weird, everyone being there today," Helen said contemplatively. "Like we all were for Lauren's trial." "And like we all will be for Barbara's trial," Nikki finished for her. "Jesus, is this what it's going to be like for the next few months?" Nikki asked bleakly, taking Helen in her arms and laying her face against Helen's neck. "Me locking up Barbara, one of my closest friends, just because I think I'm good enough to wear a suit?" "You are good enough to wear a suit," Helen assured her. "And Barbara will be far better off with you as Wing Governor, than she would have been with a perfect stranger looking after her. You're doing everything you can, Nikki, and you can't do any more." "Yes, I can," Nikki said quietly. "I can be a character witness for her for a start. Karen nearly did it for Crystal once, so I don't see why I can't do the same for Barbara." "No, I don't see why you can't either," Helen said thoughtfully, pleased to see that Nikki was at least trying to think positively. "I felt such a shit, putting the cuffs on Barbara today," Nikki said gloomily, brief tears of utter shame rising to her eyes. "When George saw me putting them back on at the end of the funeral, she gave me a look of total disgust, and then smiled apologetically when she saw I'd seen." "Nikki, they all know you had to do it," Helen told her gently, softly running her hand over Nikki's back. "Doesn't make me feel any better though," Nikki said miserably. "You remember when I took Monica to Spencer's funeral?" Helen said quietly. "I felt exactly the same. I hated having to put the handcuffs on her, as though she was nothing more than the likes of Shell Dockley, but I had to do it. Making sure Monica couldn't do a runner, was part of my job, just as it is yours. It makes you feel as though you're the most evil, heartless bitch in the world, but you're just doing your job. Barbara will forgive you for it, if she's even remotely concerned about it, which given what day it is, I doubt." "Why do you always talk so much sense?" Nikki asked tearfully, softly kissing her. "One of yesterday's patients wouldn't agree with you," Helen told her fondly, thinking of John's perpetual insistence on arguing with her. "He got up to walk out at one point, and I found myself shouting at him just as I used to with you." Nikki laughed. "I bet that scared the shit out of him." "It made him listen to me, and it stopped him from walking out, so yeah, I guess it worked. The point is, fulfilling the requirements of your job, whatever that job happens to be, sometimes involves doing things that you bitterly regret. In your position, you can't help that, it's just part and parcel of having superiors who create policies that you have to abide by."
After patching herself up, and clearing up the whisky and broken glass from the floor of the sitting-room, Karen sat down on the sofa and lit a cigarette. What on earth had made her do something quite so stupid? She'd never even thought of cutting before now, so why today? Why, even taking into account her reaction to being at Henry's funeral, had she suddenly resorted to something so desperate, so soul shattering as cutting? She played absent-mindedly with the dressing on her arm, extremely ashamed of what lay under the covering. Helen had suggested that Ross might have been cutting himself, so what did this make her, no better than her own, highly stupid, utterly self-obsessed son? Feeling the slight sting of the cut, she silently prayed that no one would ever discover what she'd done. But then another thought struck her, drenching her in the cold sweat of emerging fear. Would she, could she do it again? If she ever encountered that feeling of suffocation again, would taking a blade to her skin become her immediate response?